Global Dialogues

Fraternity can be lived out in many domains of human life. The term arises from the links among siblings in the family. It is the bond of affection and mutual support that ties brothers and sisters to each other within the family. But it has also been used to call for mutual support in the interaction of people in the larger life of society. When the French coined their appeal to “liberty, equality, and fraternity” during their revolution against the monarchy, fraternity surely had social and even political significance. The meaning of “fraternity” is better indicated today by “solidarity,” a term that more clearly refers to links that reach beyond the family.

Two of these larger dimensions of fraternity can be called “social solidarity” and “intellectual solidarity.” Social solidarity links people together in ways that exhibit mutual and reciprocal responsibility in their social interaction and that enables each other to benefit from that interaction. Achieving these benefits for all means that all should be able to participate actively in the life of the larger society, helping to build up the common good of the community and sharing in it. Such participation has both political and economic dimensions. For example, in South Africa when apartheid was still in place, political solidarity required enabling Black and “Coloured” people to participate actively in political life through the vote and free assembly. In the economic sphere, solidarity required overcoming the exclusion of Black people from adequate housing, jobs, and education. Today, it still requires overcoming the unequal land ownership and other race-based disparities that continue to mar South Africa’s economic life. 

Unequal participation in political and economic life, of course, is not found only in the extreme forms they took in South Africa under apartheid. Limits on participation due to race, gender, or other distinctive aspects of one’s identity regrettably continue to undermine social life for these groups, both in the United States and elsewhere in the world. Failures to assure the social participation needed to protect key aspects of people’s humanity need to be challenged. Such challenges can take the form of moral calls to work for deeper solidarity and more serious commitment to fraternity.

Fraternity or solidarity also has an intellectual dimension. Today there is increasing interaction among people from different cultural and religious traditions. This can easily generate conflict unless all attain at least a basic understanding of why those who are different live the way they do. This understanding of those who are different can be called intellectual solidarity—a basic understanding of why others think and act as they do. It also has an imaginative dimension—the ability to appreciate the most important meanings of the stories, symbols, and historic events that shape the lives of those one meets from other communities. Achieving this intellectual and imaginative solidarity calls for dialogue among people and across the differences among cultures and religions. Attaining basic forms of such understanding and imaginative appreciation of those who are different generates solidarity. These realizations of fraternity are deeply needed today.

Rev. David Hollenbach, S.J., is the Pedro Arrupe Distinguished Professor in the Walsh School of Foreign Service and senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University.